Americans need no reminding, nor does the world; there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. There is nothing exceptional about this piece of knowledge, it was obvious to me and some 30 million others back in February 2003.

But there are many very simple and equally obvious facts that do seem to have evaded the harsh light of general acknowledgement; in particular, the consequences. A nation was destroyed.

It was eloquently expressed by William Blum, author of ‘Killing Hope’:

‘ …the people of that unhappy land lost everything – their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighbourhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again. … “.

Deeper than this are the ongoing consequences of a failure to reflect and respond. Iraqi children, who survived and grew up in the hardship of 12 years of vindictive sanctions to become the young men and women who ended their youth witnessing the Shock and Awe of their loss are the heirs to our consequences.

If their new-found democracy is as competent as ours in shaping a general acknowledgement of reality it will not compensate for their grief and hardship of the past decade. Certainly, awareness and understanding of this has encroached little into the perceptions of our general acknowledgement. Little wonder they hate us.

The ranks of ISIS must be swelled brimful of men and women deeply damaged by something far worse than the PTSD afflicting our ‘joystick Heroes’. ISIS need look no further than Iraq for their heroes; men and women who will do the unspeakable to others with sufficient ‘good cause’.

They will be much inspired by the zeal with which we have fawned over those who have done the unspeakable to them in our name and excused and rewarded those who planned and carried out a war of aggression, after studiously disarming and rendering our victim helpless with the instruments of International Law and the will of the ‘International Community’. And the supply of deeply damaged men and women flourishes in our blindness to the obvious, swelled at home and abroad in Lybia, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Turkey...

Those who have done the most to expose the truth and the cause and effect relationship of our immoral, aggressive violence in the service of hideous lies that are and ought to have been obvious, and the consequences that arise from it, Manning, Assange, Snowden, Hastings all have been viciously persecuted, all under the watch of the present liar in chief who was gullibly celebrated as the agent of change. Is Trump simply a more sophisticated scam?

Someone, somewhere, has nevertheless tried again to expose the truth. The disgusting abuse of the democratic process and public trust that has been robustly exposed is classic ‘Clinton’. Their devious criminal corruption has been a hallmark of American politics that has been obvious for several decades and it points a sharp finger at many other truths that ought to be obvious.

Desperation to hide the message and vilify the messenger is everywhere evident and reality shines under a blaze of light. Whoever and wherever they are they deserve the acclaim of all humanity because they give us a glimmer of hope.

Some would have us believe, as they’ve done before, that the whistleblower’s motives are sinister, others hope, as has been argued elsewhere, that their motives were much like those of Manning, Assange and Snowden – revulsion! These other true heroes of our time stand as credible advocates for that case. Whatever their motives, the change is coming and change we must.

When our general acknowledgement at last opens the possibility to make the logical connections that point all the way back through the 9/11 false flag and the murder of John Kennedy and to examine these matters with the intellectual objectivity they deserve we will first, have the truth, then we must respond to it with integrity.

Finian Cunningham concluded a recent article with the assertion: “No credibility, no morals and no authority, the US Deep State is in deep trouble.”. Let us all hope with all the hope we have left that he’s right.